1147. HEADS OF NUNS.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Sienese: died about 1348).
Ambrogio, the younger brother of Pietro Lorenzetti (see 1113), was the greatest of the early Sienese painters. His series of frescoes in the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Publico of Siena, typifying good and bad government, are known to every traveller. They are full both of artistic beauty and historical interest (see the description by Symonds in his Sketches and Studies, iii. 43). The heads of many of Ambrogio's allegorical figures are of great beauty and grandeur—especially that of Peace, which is of classical dignity and may possibly have been modelled on the lines of some antique sculpture.
The work before us is a mere shattered fragment of fresco (from a church in Siena), but it is enough to show the artist's feeling for the true portraiture that identifies character with likeness. The nuns' faces are typical of the strong yet tender qualities developed in a life of seclusion and self-sacrifice.